


There Be Dragons

by Mhalachai



Series: Blood In The Water [3]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Dragons, Fairy Tales, Family Secrets, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-11
Updated: 2017-03-11
Packaged: 2018-10-02 20:23:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10226537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mhalachai/pseuds/Mhalachai
Summary: Seven-year-old Otabek knew two things - he wasn't really related to a dragon, and he was never going to fall in love. Things like that belonged only in fairy tales.





	

**Author's Note:**

> so a few days ago I was answering [Blood in the Water](http://archiveofourown.org/series/632603) asks and I somehow committed myself to the idea that [Otabek is distantly related to a dragon](https://mhalachai.tumblr.com/post/158137714607/does-otabek-in-your-au-have-anything-special-since). Combining that with this post about how [90% of apples in the world can be traced back to two trees](http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/3125) in the apple forests around Almaty (Otabek's hometown) and anyway here's the Otabek backstory piece that no one asked for.

* * *

"No, Grandfather," Otabek interrupted. "That's not right."

Grandfather stopped mid-gesture. "What's not right?" he asked, his big bushy eyebrows waggling. On Otabek's lap, his baby sister Gaukhar gurgled in delight. "This is my story and I am telling it right."

Otabek let out a huff. He was seven years old and he knew how stories were supposed to go. "No, you said that the soldiers found the dragon guarding a _treasure_ and that treasure was an apple tree. That's _wrong_. An apple tree isn't treasure."

"Otabek," came his mother's warning voice from the other room. "Don't talk back to your grandfather."

"I'm not!" Otabek batted aside his sister's hand, all slimy and covered in slobbery cookie crumbs. "I'm just saying that he got the story wrong."

Grandfather laughed in his wheezy way. "You say an apple tree isn't treasure. What is treasure worthy of a dragon?"

Otabek thought. "Gold," he said after a minute, absently helping Gaukhar stand so she could bounce up and down. "And gemstones, rubies and pearls and emeralds." He kissed the baby's head, making her babble at him.

Grandfather looked at Otabek, his face growing serious. "Do you think that is treasure? Or is that what they tell you in these state schools?"

"It's in the books," Otabek protested. "Dragons sit on a pile of gold." Otabek's mother had a gold necklace that Otabek wasn't allowed to even touch, but he could look at it, and he thought privately that gold was nice and all but it wasn't that interesting. But books were books, and Otabek knew what he had read.

"Gold and jewels are pretty," Grandfather agreed. " But gold does not feed your children. You cannot make your houses from rubies. Pearls will not burn to keep you warm in the wintertime."

Otabek helped Gaukhar sit down. "But you can use gold to buy those things," he protested.

Grandfather's eyebrows went up and up on his forehead. "Buy things," he repeated, shaking his head. "What can you buy when no one has anything? When the Soviets come back and crush the people underfoot?"

"There are no more Soviets," Otabek said.

"There will always be people like the Soviets." Something had changed on Grandfather's face, something sad that made Otabek's stomach feel like he had swallowed worms. He didn't like it when Grandfather looked sad like that.

Otabek lifted Gaukhar to her feet, ignoring her squawks,  and directed her at Grandfather. She toddled uncertainly on her baby feet, but she made it most of the way over to him before falling forward. Grandfather caught her and lifted her to his lap, blowing a raspberry against her cheek. She screamed with delighted laughter.

"What's the rest of the story?" Otabek asked hesitantly.

"Well." Grandfather cleared his throat. "Where was I?"

"The soldiers had just found the dragon guarding the apple tree."

"Yes." Grandfather put his hand around Gaukhar's belly to keep her from tumbling to the ground. "The captain told his soldiers, kill the dragon and we will take the treasure! And most of the soldiers, they charged forward, and the dragon breathed fire and killed them where they stood."

Otabek shivered.

"And then the captain tried to turn his horse and ride away, but the horse shied and the captain fell down, and the dragon pounced on him and bit his head right off."

Gaukhar reached up to pull on Grandfather's beard. He caught her hand and bounced her on his knee.

"But oh-so-great-grandfather Kasym had stood back when the rest had tried to kill the dragon, and now he was the only one left alive. He put down his bow as the dragon approached him, and the dragon asked him why he did not try to kill her like the others had."

"What did he say?"

"He said, I will not kill something so beautiful. And then the dragon sat back and breathed fire into the air, and then she changed into a beautiful woman, with eyes that shone and sparkled in the sunlight like gemstones."

Otabek hugged his legs to his chest. In spite of himself, he was getting interested.

"And she said, this is my treasure and I cannot leave it. Kasym looked at the apple tree, growing very strong, and he said, if you travel with me, you can plant apple seeds everywhere you go, so no one will be able to destroy them all."

"What did she say?" Otabek asked.

"She said, if you marry me and give me many sons, I will travel with you and plant apple seeds everywhere we go. But we must always travel, or else I will return to my apple tree and stay here forever."

"And he said yes?"

"Of course he said yes." Grandfather put Gaukhar on the floor, where she promptly crawled back to Otabek. "So they took many apples and they traveled out of the mountains, planting apples wherever they went, and that is why there are so many apple trees in Kazakhstan."

Otabek blinked, but that was apparently the end of the story. "But did they get married?" he demanded. "Did they have kids? Did they grow old?"

Grandfather shrugged. "Of course they got married, and of course they had children. You're here, aren't you?"

Otabek rubbed his chin in thought. "I'm not _really_ a dragon's great-great-grandson. That's just a story."

Grandfather shrugged again. "You could be. Who is to say?"

"Dragons aren't _real_ , Grandfather."

"Not any more," Grandfather agreed. "There are apple trees everywhere, aren't there? So that part at least is real."

"That sort of thing doesn't happen," Otabek protested as Gaukhar crawled into his lap. "It's just a fairy story."

Grandfather stood. "You would be surprised," he said as he went over to the stove. "Maybe one day you will travel far away and meet someone with shimmering eyes and fall in love with them, and then what will you say?"

Otabek got up, hauling his sister along with him. "That's never going to happen," he grumbled. "I'm never going to fall in love. Love is _gross_."

Grandfather ruffled Otabek's hair as Otabek put Gaukhar into her high chair. "Love is not gross, and when you're older, you will see that."

He turned to make tea, and Otabek made a face at Gaukhar. She laughed and held out her hands for a cookie.

Grandfather was wrong, Otabek thought as he went to the cookie tin. He was never going to travel far away and meet someone special and look at their eyes and fall in love.

That was something that only happened in fairy tales.


End file.
